[Effects of the process of pharmaceutical deregulation on physicians]

By the term deregulation economists indicate the modulation of regulatory intervention resulting in a decrease of the limitation and restriction imposed on manufacturing and marketing activities. The process applies even to the pharmaceutical area and is enhanced by the increasing subjectivity of the consumers and the irreversible involvement of the medical profession with public expenditure. Health demand is no longer totally and exclusively fulfilled by physician's intervention and prescribing. Therefore, the resulting demedicalization and the use of means other than medications, such as surgical and medical aids, nutritional, dietetic and sanitary products and the so called medicated cosmetics, impose modifications of the preexisting regulation and organization. Generics will follow the assignment of a medicinal product to one class of medicaments rather than to another, thus allowing the adoption of substituting programs. Both national and European legislations follow this trend to attain economical advantages through pharmaceutical deregulation. The medical profession is changed by this process in a way which is much more significant than any other event.